Well, this doesn't really have to do with the patch. The patch just makes it clear that with its current memory layout, GNU can't handle more than 1GB.

Using another memory layout is possible: Linux people have done it with their "HIGHMEM" option. But this is a horrible bug-prone mess which now reveals to be useless since we will all have 64bits-capable systems sooner or later, won't we? ;)

So I'd say "why bother?". If people want more than 1GB, they should just buy 64. At the time we are really able to fill 1GB with KDE/Gnome/OOo/whatever, I guess we will all have 64.

Note: this is not exactly 1GB, yes. Again, we might do like Linux: shift the 1GB/3GB limit between kernel and user so that the kernel can really map 1GB of memory.

Starting with the application of the patch from bug #7118, GNU Mach's usage of the machine's memory equipment is currently forced to be somewhere below 1 GiB, to make GNU Mach work at all on systems with such enlarged RAM installations. This is -- of course -- not optimal. See the calculation of and with `kernel_virtual_end' and `morevm' in i386/intel/pmap.c and `phys_last_addr' in i386/i386at/model_dep.c.